This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day four of week one of our look through the book of Joshua. We're
going to look at verses 10 to 18 today. These first few days in the study of
this book, we've looked at how promises are born.

We've looked at what do you do, you might picture it this way in your mind, what
do you do when you're on the borders of God's promise, just like they were on
the borders of the promised land. What do you do when you're on the borders of
God's promise? How do you begin to trust?

How do you begin to enter in? As we said yesterday, this is not a once in a
lifetime issue, this is a daily issue in our lives as believers. And we begin to
learn about this in the first chapter of Joshua.

First as God commands Joshua, we learn. And now as Joshua commands the people,
we learn some very practical, very real things about how you and I begin to live
God's promises. There is a wealth of teaching in these verses we're going to
look at today about how to live God's promises in your life, just the practical
truth.

First in verses 10 to 11, listen to these verses. So Joshua ordered the officers
of the people, "Go through the camp and tell the people, get your supplies
ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here and go in and take
possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you for your own.

" Very simple verses, very simple word of leadership from Joshua. He hears what
God has to say, he passes it on to the people. And as he passes it on, just the
simple things that he says remind us, picture for us, how you and I begin to
receive God's promises, live God's promises in our life.

To receive a promise is not just to hear it, that's hearing it. To receive it
means you open it up. It's like receiving a gift.

I haven't really received it until I open it up, I get it out and I begin to use
it. How do I receive God's promises? There are four things that happen here.

First he says, "Gather your supplies. " Second he says, "Wait three days. "
Third he says, "Take possession of the land.

" And fourth he says, "The Lord is giving you this land. " Let's just walk
through those. Number one, gather supplies.

Tell the people, get your supplies ready. So first you have to ready yourself to
receive God's promises. Sometimes in our lives, God's promises are lacking
because we don't ready ourselves.

We don't take the time like we talked about yesterday to meditate on God's word.
We don't take the time to pray. We don't take the time to be around God's
people.

We spend all of our time in some hobby that's fun to us, but then there's an
emptiness that comes alongside of that, because all you have is the fun. You
don't have any significance in life. You don't have any fulfillment in life.

Your relationships are shallow. You feel like the dreams that you have are just
waiting year after year. You need a different kind of way of thinking of life.

And this idea of gathering supplies, it's really the picture for you and I of
getting ready to receive God's promise. What does that mean for you? How do you
need to pray differently?

How do you need to read God's word differently? For me to say to you that God
wants to achieve an incredible victory in your life, but not challenge you and
say you've got to get yourself ready to receive that victory would be ignoring
vast sections of God's word. The Bible says again and again, purify yourself so
that God can be at work in your life.

If a man cleanses himself from these things, he'll be ready for action. God
wants you and I to ready our hearts to receive what he has to say and what he
wants to do in our lives. And the best ways I know to do that, the three best
ways are to let God's word make its way into my life, to spend time talking to
him in prayer and to spend time around God's people who can encourage me.

You're ready yourself. That's how you pack your bag. That's how you get your
supplies ready for what God wants to do.

That's how you get yourself more alert, more alive to expecting God's will in
your life. If you're feeling like I don't have any feeling that God's going to
do anything great in my life, why do you think I'd ever feel that way? The truth
of the matter is you should feel that way.

God's made you to feel that way. And if you're not feeling that way, there are a
few simple choices you can make that can begin to turn that around. Spend time
in his word.

Spend time talking to him. Spend time with his people. Get yourself ready to
receive God's promise.

A second picture that's here is Joshua says to him, get yourself ready. Then he
says, but then wait three days. Get ready, but then wait.

What a picture of how God's promise comes into our lives. And so many of us have
been disappointed by this. We get our hearts pure.

We spend time in God's word. We pray. Okay, here I am, God.

I am as ready as I possibly could be. And then nothing happens. And sometimes
it's not three days.

It feels like three months or three years. And we wonder, what is God doing?
Remember that there is a difference between God's will and God's timing in your
life.

His will is always going to be at work, but now is not always the right time.
Now is not always the moment that he wants to work. So you get yourself ready,
but then you trust God's timing.

And I'll promise you, he will almost always wait longer than you expected. Oh,
sometimes he'll surprise you and work more quickly than you anticipated. But
most of the time, God builds in a delay as we're trusting his promises.

Why? Because the delay purifies our hearts to realize we're trusting in him. So
during that waiting time, what do you do?

You trust God's timing. You trust that God's still at work. Because God's
promises for your life are for today.

He wants to do something in your life today. There's no doubt about it through
his word. He wants to make you a witness today.

He wants to make you someone who's living out his character today. He does have
something to do in your life today. But the particulars of how that vision is
going to be fulfilled in your life, some ministry that you're dreaming about,
some relationship that you wish would happen, many times that takes time.

So you live in the now, and you also live in trusting God's timing. You get your
supplies, and then you wait the three days. And then the scripture says a third
truth out of these verses is, "Then take possession of the land.

" You recognize your possessions. Three days from now, you're going to cross the
Jordan, and you're going to take possession of the land that the Lord your God
is giving you. One of your possessions in your life as a follower of Christ is
the promises of God.

All these things I'm talking about, you may be thinking, "Oh, this is great, but
is it really for me? Isn't this like more for pastors or people of really great
faith? " No, this is for you.

1 Corinthians 1. 20 says, "All the promises of God for every believer are, yes,
in Jesus Christ. " But a possession has to be recognized as yours before you
begin to use it as yours.

And if you think God's promises are just about other people's lives or just
other people's possessions, you're always going to enjoy God working in their
lives and never see what he can do in your life. Now, in one way, that can be a
safe place to live. Just being a spectator Christian, never being on the front
lines, but it's not what God has for your life.

They are your possession. He wants you to be a part of taking this promise into
your life. We'll talk about that just a bit more in a minute.

You take possession. But then he says at the end of this, "The land that the
Lord your God is giving you. " You recognize that the promises are your
possession, but you also recognize that the promises are a gift, that they're
wrapped in grace.

They're bought with love. If there was a card on this gift of God's promise, it
would be from Jesus because he died for me. That's how the promises become real
in my life, these gifts that God has given.

So it's a possession. I am an inheritor of God's promise. It's a great gift that
he has given me, but it's not one that I brought into my life by my own works.

So I can't be prideful about it. I have to be humble about it. That's the power
of recognizing the Lord your God is giving this in your life.

The minute I get prideful about God's promise in my life, it just like sand
through a sifter, it just seems to disappear. But the moment I realize that in
humility, I can recognize him, that solidifies the promise in my life. The Lord
your God is giving it.

So those four things again, how do I begin to live out God's promise? First
gather supplies. The picture there is you ready yourself to receive through
God's word, through God's people.

You wait three days. You'd be willing to trust God's timing. You take
possession.

You recognize that the possession is yours, not just others. God wants you to
possess his promises, but it's a possession that the Lord is giving. You
recognize that the promises are a gift wrapped in God's grace.

Now with all that in mind, let me give you one more picture in this chapter.
It's in verses 12 to 14. Verse 12 says, "But to the Rubinites, the Gadites, and
the half-tribe of Manasseh," Joshua said, "remember the command that Moses the
servant of the Lord gave you.

The Lord your God is giving you rest and has granted you this land. Your wives,
your children, and your livestock may stay in the land that Moses gave you east
of the Jordan, but all your fighting men, fully armed, must cross over ahead of
your brothers so you are to help your brothers. " Now the picture here is that
these three tribes, or these two tribes and half-tribe, had been given land on
the other side of the Jordan.

They weren't going to have to cross in order to get the land that they wanted.
But Joshua says, "Remember the command. Your families can stay here.

You already possess this land, but you're going to have to go in with the rest
of us to fight the battles that have to be fought to take this land. The
principle is no one receives release from the struggles of life. No one gets the
promises without the battles.

No one. No one. In fact, to say this a very simple way, in your life, the
greatest battles that you have in your life, the greatest battles with a sense
of inadequacy, or the greatest battles with a temptation, or the greatest
battles to become all that God wants you to be in your life, or the greatest
battles to really relate well to others, the greatest battles to have faith,
those greatest battles in your life, to win those greatest battles, you must
fight the battle.

I don't know how many Christians I've met that just don't get this one. They
want to be like these tribes that would stay on the other side of the Jordan and
just say, "Well, God could just hand me the battle. There'll be no struggle to
it.

" It doesn't work that way. It's a three steps forward, two steps back
proposition. There's a lot of battles in living the Christian life.

Now, in one sense, there is a truth that God fights my battles for me. There's
no doubt about the fact in Scripture that the victory is His. But within His
victory, He has battles for you, the battle to trust, the battle to hope, the
battle to love.

Some people think, "God will fight my battles for me. " That doesn't work. Some
people think, "Others will fight my battles for me.

" It's your battle, spiritual battle, not theirs. There are some battles that
only you can fight. You cannot live on the edge of the promised land forever
just gleaning off of other people's battle fighting.

God has some battles for you to fight, some faith battles. Some people think,
"I'll fight the battle alone. That's how I'll win it.

" That doesn't work either. That's the John Wayne way of fighting battles, not
the Joshua way of fighting battles. Joshua fought this battle with all the
people of Israel.

Although you cannot have other people fight your battles for you, you must have
other people fight your battles with you in their prayers, in their
encouragement, in their teaching, in their presence in your life. So how's it
going to be for you when it comes to God's battles? Are you just sitting back
right now on the edge of the promised land saying, "God will fight the battles
for me"?

What battles does he have for you to fight? He's won the victory, but what
battles does he have for you to fight? Are you thinking, "Others will fight the
battle for me"?

You've just been trusting in other people rather than what God wants to do in
your life. Are you trying to fight the battle alone? Let's begin to change that
today through prayer.

That's what God wants to do in our lives through this book of Joshua. He wants
to change things. So right now in prayer, Lord, we ask that you change our
hearts and minds.

Help us to learn how to fight our battles, the ones you have for us, within your
victory. We can't achieve the victory, it's yours. But you have some battles for
us to face today.

We need to trust you like we never have before, to pray like we never have
before, to hope in you like never before, to love people like we never have
before. And that's a battle because we want to be selfish. We want to let our
temptations overwhelm us.

So let your spirit win that battle within our lives today as we trust you.
Forgive us for sometimes thinking that others will fight the battle for us or
trying to fight it all alone. Instead, help us to find those people in our lives
that will help us to fight this battle we're facing.

Help us to trust in you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Tomorrow we're going to take a bit of a turn and we're going to begin to look at
how you measure out God's vision for your life.